


If I Live To 102

by orphan_account



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:21:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27624680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Inspired by a song by Colin Hays: "I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You"
Relationships: Jake Peralta & Amy Santiago, Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	If I Live To 102

Jake's been thinking a lot about what Amy asked him the other day. She asked him, after Mac noticed that a lot of other kids' mothers and fathers lived in the same house and were in love, whether they could put in more of an effort to be friends. To at least give him that. And Jake really wanted to say yes, because he wants to be a good father and he knows that it sucks when your parents aren't a unit, from first-hand experience, and he wants to be better than what he got growing up.

But he just can't do it. It hurts too much.

And that's what he has to tell Amy over lunch today. 

"I don't think we loved each other the same," Jake said. "Because you replaced me, in a way I can't. Even if you didn't think that of me when we were together, that's how things have played out. They say before you die your life flashes before your eyes, and they say a love story is like a death, but you don't actually die so really the death flashes before your eyes, not your life. I feel like I'm going about my life and then every week like clockwork I see you—not actually, but in my head—looking with lovestruck eyes at someone else, desiring someone else, kissing someone else, I see you in bed with them and I know they're the luckiest guy in the world and I used to be that guy so it hurts, and I see you forgetting me and all the memories we created under the weight of all the new ones you'll create without me, and.........."

"What the fuck, Jake, why are you telling me this now? Are you trying to guilt me?," Amy asks, incredulous.

"No, Ames, I'm not," Jake says. "You deserve nothing but happiness and I do want that for you. I'm explaining why I can't be your friend. Not really. Not in a way that won't hurt me. Because I believed we had something irreplaceable, and I think that's true on my end, but not on yours, and that gap hurts. It really fucking hurts. That you can't love me as much as I love you. It makes me jealous, and sad, and in pain, and I hate it and wish I didn't feel it. I hope one day you're not my one true love, and then I don't feel that way and then we're on an equal footing again and we can be friends. But until I get there, if I ever do, the truth is you're doing nothing wrong in living your life to the fullest, _and I'll never let Mac think otherwise,_ but you living your life destroys me all the same. The more distance there is, the better."

"Is that why you're not friends with Rosa anymore?," Amy asks, things finally clicking.

"Pretty much," Jake says. "It's not her fault. She supported us as a couple, but that's the truth of rooting for a couple right? When the couple doesn't work out, you pick one and root for them to move on as best as possible, even though that attacks just how unique and supposedly irreplaceable the past relationship really was. So, yeah, she's doing nothing wrong encouraging you to move on to the best possible person, but it's also a reminder of the inequality between us. There are no bad guys, but it sucks nonetheless."

"Come on, Jake, she's been your friend since academy," Amy says. But Jake continues talking.

"And I don't know if you and Rosa are laughing about the poor ex who can't move on—god, I regret making those jokes about Teddy and Constantine—but the truth is I am that person. I hope one day I won't be, but today I am not. Today, you are irreplaceable to me, and I am replaceable to you. No wrongdoers, but that's just a fact of the world. And the sad truth is, when I think of past relationships, like my relationship with Sophia, the end result is the same. She's with someone else, probably, and she's forgotten me, probably. But I think I knew then that it was more transactional, meant to be a temporary, replaceable thing. So yes I was sad when it ended, but I got over it."

"So you'll get over me too!," Amy says.

"Maybe. But right now, Ames, I look back and think I had average happiness for 3 months with her and maybe a month of average sadness. With you I had 5 years of true unadulterated joy and now maybe the rest of my life with a sharp pain in my gut knowing the person I want more than anything in the world is happy without me. It really is a sharp pain, a nauseous feeling. On _net_ , Sophia's going to be the happier relationship of my life. You were never obligated to love me then, just as you're not now, and I wonder if I would have preferred you didn't let me in. Didn't let me get invested in someone who might be irreplaceable. Some people can love someone who doesn't feel the same and stomach the pain, and I thought I was one of them—every single day I got to spend my life with you, that's what I meant, but I'm not."

Jake hates to say that. But even replaceable relationships involve love, and emotional connection, and companionship. Almost by necessity, because even if you wouldn't look your partner in the eye and call them replaceable, most relationships do end and most people do move on and so most people in the end replace those they once considered irreplaceable. Maybe the people who are happiest in life recognized that going in, rather than after the wreckage.

He wonders if the relationships where both are settling for someone who is great but not their perfect person are happier, because they enjoy companionship and emotional connection and love forged by shared history, but when hearts break they are more likely to break even. Maybe people are happier when they say "I love you" and mean "I want to be with you" rather than "I can't afford to lose you." Jake meant both, and he wonders if deep down Amy, even if she didn't quite know it, only meant the former. 

He went into a relationship with Amy, seeing her as the perfect person, someone he couldn't replace, his "dream girl," and now her absence tears at him every day. Amy was smarter—she called him the right person for her, not her dream man. She didn't mean ill by it, of course, but the point stands all the same. The right person can change easier than can one's dream girl—even if she didn't think it consciously, somewhere deep down she knew love was more transactional than Jake did, and she was smarter for it. 

That last monologue really does take Amy by surprise. Surely, she thought, their marriage meant more to him than a relationship with someone who never actually loved him back. 

"One day I really hope you're not my true love," Jake says. It sounds so bad to say, but isn't that what people do after breakups always? "One day, you're happy with someone else, I'm happy with someone else, you're not jealous of me, I'm not jealous of you, or hell if we had broken up and both always been jealous of each other and always longed for each other, then it would be easier to be friends. Sad, maybe, but possible. Until I'm on the same page as you, until I can replace you the way you have me, it just won't work," Jake says.

"I promise you, I am trying to move on. I am trying to move on. One day, I hope we will be friends, for Mac. I don't want you to hate me. I don't want you to forget me. That hurts too, because I thought we had a great love story and I'd hate for it to go down that way. But for now, the way we're going, cordial but not friends, that works best for me. I know you wanted more of me, Ames, but I just can't. I'm sorry," Jake concludes.

He gets up to leave, stifling his tears. Amy just sits in the restaurant in silence. 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why I keep doing these sad one-shots tbh. I'm sad about my BF of 8 years and I ending and I'm not over it, and this is me venting through fictional characters. It won't happen on the show, so don't let it ruin the characters for you. Not sure why I'm ruining them for me, tbh. Sorry ya'll.


End file.
